FREE FOR ALL
Volunteers have donated about $10,000 worth of food
Volunteers set up Little Free Pantry to help community
Tucked in a little cabinet along a curb near downtown Loveland, shelves of canned goods, toilet paper, juice and other food await anyone in need. Stocked by a network of community volunteers, the Little Free Pantry has provided free food daily for the past seven months.
The concept is: “Take what you need. Leave what you can.”
“It’s a cross section of our entire society just about,” said resident Sharon Shuster Anhorn, who started the pantry and has seen people come by for food ever y day.
“I see older people come, seniors who are not making it ver y well, probably living on Social Security. I’ve talked to a lot of them. And I’ve seen people who actually have jobs, maybe par t-time jobs or full-time jobs, who aren’t making it. The prices of food keep going up, and people aren’t making it to the end of the month so to speak.”
Shuster Anhorn started the Little Free Pantr y, but she says it’s the entire community who has made it flourish. A network of people keep the pantr y stocked, ever yone contributing what they can.
“I don’t want anybody coming to that pantry and going away hungry,” said Shuster Anhorn.
HOW AND WHY IT STARTED
In mid-april, when the pandemic’s affects were star ting to spread across the community, Shuster Anhorn installed the Little Free Pantr y next to her Little Free Librar y.
“A friend of mine actually planted the seed,” Shuster Anhorn said. “She wrote me and said, ‘What do you think about taking the books out of the Little Free Library and using it for a food pantry?’ I couldn’t give up the librar y. Because of COVID, people were using it more than ever. It’s been installed and running strong for seven years. I put up another cabinet especially for the food.”
She filled the small cabinet, thinking the size would be perfect. But then, as word spread through people talking about the Little Free Pantry and through posts on Facebook, donations outgrew the pantr y and moved into several bins as well. And residents were accessing the food, needing it, Shuster Anhorn said.
“As more and more people were losing their jobs and more and more people were coming to the pantry, it was emptying out more quickly than we could fill it, so we started adding bins,” she said.
Through a Facebook site launched to help others during the pandemic, NOCO Community C.A.R.E.S., a network of supporters emerged. Community members have volunteered to help, keeping the pantry stocked and recently, since the weather dipped below freezing, helping Shuster Anhorn take canned goods in each night and bring them back out in the morning to stock the shelves.
Several volunteers, who gathered at the pantry recently, said for them it is an easy and safe way to help.
Rosie Haught had to stop volunteering at the Community Kitchen because she is immune-compromised, and providing food for the pantry was a way to help without being in contact with a lot of people.
“We’ve been there,” she said. “My husband lost his job, and we lost ever ything. We know what it’s like to be in need. This is a chance to pay it for ward.”
Shuster Anhorn estimated that community members — many she has never met or even seen — have dropped off about $10,000 worth of goods since April 15.
“There’s wonderful, wonderful people coming and going,” Shuster Anhorn said. “I’ve been warmed about what the community has done around this.”
A LARGER TREND
After launching her Little Free Pantry and seeing the need, Shuster Anhorn hopes others will follow suit and establish neighborhood food pantries across Loveland.
Nationwide, there are hundreds of Little Free Pantries that have registered with a specific website, littlefreepantry.org, all with the same goal of feeding their neighbors and helping those in need. So far, 23 Colorado locations are registered on the website with two in Fort Collins and one in Longmont.
The website states that the movement launched in 2016 when a woman in Arkansas started a Little Free Pantr y pilot, a wooden box containing food and personal care items anyone could access at any time, no questions asked, hoping her spin on the Little Free Library concept would spread.
“We are not an organization,” the website states. “We are not a nonprofit. Like you, we are neighbors with jobs, families … responsibilities; we don’t have a lot of time, and our budgets are nearly maxed. But we see our neighbors’ daily struggles and feel called to do something in a way that reflects our shared values — compassion, generosity, and trust.”
GROWING TO MEET A NEED
Most people who come to the Little Free Pantr y, star ted by Shuster Anhorn, take only what they need, leaving some for others. She takes hear t in facilitating a way to help those people who need food.
Lara Arndt, a single mom and student, has frequented the pantr y since she noticed it one day while riding her bicycle. She said the pantr y always has shelf stable milk, which helps her because sometimes it is difficult to get to the store with her 5-year-old daughter.
“Poverty is not anyone’s fault,” said Arndt, explaining that she became a single parent suddenly by circumstance not by choice and is enrolled in school full time. “I work hard. I volunteer. I’m raising my child, and I’m tr ying to better myself. I think that’s what holds a lot of people back. They feel like they shouldn’t have to support other people. Poverty, for me, is just situational.”
The pantr y, she said, provides more than just food. For her, it also gives “a sense of connection, and that people care about one another.”
In 2018, the national nonprofit Feeding America reported that there were 32,280 food insecure people in Larimer County, which was before the COVID-19 outbreak. Initial data and estimates from Feeding America expect an increase this year from 9.5% of Larimer County residents who are food insecure to 14.7%. And in a recent survey from Hunger Free Colorado, 37% of respondents say they struggle to afford food.
“We anticipate a rise in food insecurity as a result of the pandemic,” said Paul Donnelly, spokesman for the Food Bank of Larimer County. “We don’t see COVID-19 as a moment in time. Much like the 2008 recession, we think there will be a lasting ef fect to the pandemic that will impact food insecurity in Northern Colorado for some time.”
The Food Bank has juggled safety restrictions to continue to provide food to those in need and has added more outreach programs, serving a steady stream of residents during the pandemic. Donnelly stressed that the agency will continue its mission of helping those people feed themselves and their families.
Though the Little Free Pantry is separate from the Food Bank, Shuster Anhorn and the other volunteers who are making it happen share the same mission. They want to help.
“I think people are looking for ways to help,” said Mel Goldsipe, who learned about the pantry on Facebook and who, with her husband, Ar thur, has been helping out any way she can.
“It’s a hard time, and we all want to feel better, and we want others to feel better … It hurts to think about people not being able to feed themselves.”
Shuster Anhorn and other volunteers are planning to install two larger food cabinets that they believe the network will continue to fill.
A couple donated the new cabinets, which volunteers John Rider and Christopher Gilbert are retrofitting and insulating so that the food will be safe in all temperatures.
As this Little Free Pantry grows, Shuster Anhorn hopes the concept will grow throughout Loveland, giving people more places to go for food and products they need.
Gold sipe added, “There should be one in every neighborhood.”